The world is going through an evolution and it's happening faster than we thought especially with the advancement of information techno...

The world is going through an evolution and it's happening faster than
we thought especially with the advancement of information technology.

I remember
when letter-writing was in vogue; you scribble some words on a piece of
paper as a message for a relative or friend living within the same
country with you or abroad, package it in an envelope and get it
delivered via a variety of means. We did that with excitement but today,
social media has eroded this. You don't need to even go as far as
loading an internet page to send him/her private messages, you can
simply make a video call with the person via FaceTime, WhatsApp or other
instant messaging applications. People can now save themselves the
stress of visiting the market places and haggling over prices by buying
goods and services online, it's simply called e-commerce.

The transportation system has also changed significantly too. You
can stay in your house and order for a ride to anywhere within your
locality and not panic about being cheated with prices or your safety as
a credible value system has been put in place by companies providing
that service. What about making financial transactions simply from your
mobile phones without visiting the bank? The use of facial recognition
to track people rather than the painstaking human surveillance beats
one's imagination. The list goes on and one but there will be some
costly sacrifices for these convenient changes.

The world is going through an evolution and it's happening faster
than we thought especially with the advancement of information
technology. Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Automation are
gradually taking over duties performed by human beings and there is a
projection that it might worsen in the coming years. Research has
posited that robots could replace humans in a quarter of U.S jobs by
2030. Specifically, about 36 million jobs could be at high risk of
automation, according to a report by the Brookings Institution.

The headline of this article might seem to be a screaming one
considering how late development reaches Africa but we never say never.
The world is a global village and we have become more connected than
ever courtesy of the media and the internet.

The progress made by technologists in Artificial
Intelligence/Machine Intelligence means that several jobs performed by
human beings might be taken away especially the 'transitional ones' as
Canadians will say. We have heard of robots working tirelessly in
factories especially in the printing press, Fast-Moving Consumer Goods
(FMCG), and others. Some have been successfully deployed in supermarkets
and earlier this year, the Chinese state media, Xinhua News Agency did
a test-run of robots working as news anchors. Xinhua has been
experimenting with AI-driven journalism in recent years. One of its
projects, Jia Jia, a Chinese-manufactured robot who resembles a young
woman dressed in historical clothing, interviewed AI expert and Wired
magazine co-founder Kevin Kelly at an event in Hefei in 2017.

The rationale behind this innovation is that machines are cheaper
to use in the long-run and they are not prone to hassles associated with
human beings like sicknesses, emotional breakdowns, fatigue,
depression, human rights demands and other challenges that could
militate against the smooth-running of any organization. This doesn't
make the robots perfect, they do malfunction too and the errors could be
very expensive.

One of the latest breakthroughs of AI technology in the labour
sector is in the area of Customer Service. This has attained massive
success in the Dominican Republic, North America as reported by in
August 2019 by Bloomberg and companies are adopting it rapidly due to
its cost-effective nature. One of the brains behind this is a 23-year
old interactive chatbot designer named Laura Morales. The bots solve
simple queries on their own. Bots today are everywhere and the people
who design their speech are in high demand. The job is like writing a
dry screenplay with a choose your own adventure element for the many
ways customers will respond. The has been designed to engage in text and
voice chats with customers patronizing call centres. It has to deal
with keywords pertaining to common questions and problems faced by
customers using the product. The robot responds like a human being with a
reasonable level of accuracy. Any complicated issue that needs human
attention is escalated to a supervising customer care agent. According
to a documentary, the application is very easy to configure and doesn't
need too much expertise or programming knowledge. This bot works
effectively round the clock unlike human beings and it has become
attractive to business owners as it reduces operational costs. The
ripple effect here is that the workload of customer care agents has
significantly reduced and demand for customer care agents in the country
might drop if the bots are perfected. Most experienced agents now
employed only play supervisory roles over the bots. Several agents have
been left without jobs.

"A bot is never late, a bot doesn't get sick or pregnant. Those
are specific human situations you can't fight. Automation is about to
take that out" Laura Morales said during an interview.

Now how does it affect Nigeria and Africa? Hundreds of programmers
in Nigeria and Africa have been showing interest in AI and their
innovations are gradually been introduced into the market. One of the
leading commercial banks in Nigeria, the United Bank of Africa unveiled a
program named 'Leo' to attend to customers online and it has been
efficient to a large extent. As a result of its success on Facebook, Leo
was integrated with Whatsapp. With Leo on WhatsApp, customers who are
users and lovers of the app can now perform basic banking services
including checking their balances on the go, transferring funds, paying
bills, among other services. More financial institutions are expected to
follow suit in this feat of digital creativity and innovation just like
how the idea of the Automated Teller Machines and automated security
doors took over the financial sector and other areas.

A 23-year old lady and former Big Brother Naija housemate, Jackye
Madu is championing a strong campaign for the wide adoption of the AI
products in businesses with much concentration in the area of customer
care and manufacturing. She promises the products will be very
affordable and regular updates will be guaranteed to make it better. Her
AI project known as Conversa has been launched in Nigeria but details
about it have remained scanty for now. Her dream is to make Nigeria the
hub of AI in Africa. Her newfound fame, beauty, intelligence and
eloquence have made the idea an easy sell to small and medium scale
enterprises in the country. Believe me, this might seem like a tall
order at first glance but it's not. Once it's well tested and an
influencer in the business industry successfully tests the product,
others will follow in their thousands. It will become a trend and nobody
will want to be left out.

The implication is that those in the Customer Service industry will
take a heavy hit. The instant effect will be the issue of a higher
supply of labour over demand thereby leading to a sharp drop in prices
attached to their services. This will make the profession less
attractive to people as a result of its unsustainable nature. Although
there have been ethical concerns over the use of AI technology in a
business but I believe the arguments will not stand the test of time.
Most entrepreneurs want to save costs and maximize profits to sustain
their enterprises.

A recent admission made by the giant firm, IBM that workers need to
retrained is a confirmation of the progress made by AI so far which is a
threat to human beings.

Artificial Intelligence is apparently ready to get to work. Over
the next three years, as many as 120 million workers from the world's 12
largest economies may need to be retrained because of advances in
artificial intelligence and intelligent automation, according to a study
released last Friday by IBM's Institute for Business Value. The good
news is that advancements in AI are expected to not only displace jobs
but also create new ones.

Whether you are a grocer, factory worker, or journalist, all of our
jobs will soon be reshaped by automation. Some will benefit from the
new work that will emerge, and others will watch their jobs disappear
with no clear path to another means of livelihood. Managing this
transition will be the defining challenge for us in the decades ahead
and we need to be ready for it.

My strong belief is that in the nearest future, AI will not only
take over the Customer Service sector but as well as most jobs that do
not require human contacts especially the menial/low-wage ones.

Osayimwen Osahon George is a journalist and a PhD student at the University of Ibadan. He can be contacted via [email protected]

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